3 Handy features of your Fuji X-E2 that you may not know.

As freelancer you don't always need an office and you don't want to meet your clients at home. Some people like to go for a walk and discuss the project but what if it is raining? Here are some places I've had good experiences with the service and space to talk. 1. Central Museum Utrecht's café. Spacious café which is part of the main museum in Utrecht. It' mostly open only during the day. 2. Het Gegeven Paard. Wi-fi and acoustic that allows you to have a conversation. 3. Black bird. Cute place with good coffee and Wi-fi located at the Oudegracht. Somehow it feels more informal and therefore it creates a friendly mood. 4. Het Koffie Boontje. Also at the Oudegracht, across the Rembrandt cinema. Good luck with your meeting!

1. Back up the back up. I thought I had everything under control. As soon as I could I make a copy of the SD card on my hard drive. But hey, the hard drive broke and the SD card got writen over. There is never enough back up for your images. The cloud seems the safest space right now. Hard drive recovery can be a very expensive joke. I paid a 1000.- euro and did not get the images back. Seriously, back it all up, now! 2. Falling into the "Exposure" trap. People think that photography is just clicking a button. It is for them but then, why don't they do it themselves? If they want YOU to take their pictures they have to pay for your time, equipment, travel costs, etc. Free work is OK only when YOU want to add this images to your portfolio. If this does not benefit anyone but another company you should not do it. You are running a business, otherwise take it as hobby and find a side job. Besides, you would hurt the industry, since more and more people are getting used to getting images for free. Students take images for free, and not even. 3. Not having a website. Whenever I met a photographer without a website I feel confused. Some have the argument that they are still working on it and others say they are already too busy to keep it up (yet, they have a side job and aren't following their own dream). I do believe that for the bigger clients and the long run, a portfolio is not only a symbol of professionality but a basic showcase need. Creative agencies won't have the time to meet first to look at your analogue portfolio, it is 2017. I hope you learn from my mistakes, specially the back up one. Good luck with your photography!

1. Focus My portfolio changed a thousand times through the years. I would not dare to show my first portfolio right now! The feedback of how people experienced it was crucial for my growth. I had included every sample of everything I ever did, from communication advice, websites I built, paintings, poetry and photography. I remember people telling me "But, what are you then?". I used to reply "It's a new age, we can be everything" The only problem was that people didn't know what to hire me for. Friends with companies said "I want to work with you but what do you do?" It was hard to focus but I went through a selection of what I was better at and what I enjoyed doing the most. Right now I only do photography. 2. Mood In a class of from Joey Lawrence I learnt to organise a portfolio by colour and so create smooth changes of mood. He showed his print portfolio and how he would make the pages match with eachother and I applied this to my online gallery. I started either by cold images (blue, green, purple) and slowly build up to yellow, like a climax of colours and then pass to red to conclude in a strong emotion. This details have generated a ton of compliments about my portfolio, without them exactly being aware why, it just feels good and it looks clean. I have no OCDs (not that I know) but imagining the website from a perspective of a heavy OCD person helps me to pay attention to detail. Another thing that I learnt from working for 3voor12, a music news platform, is that you either includ colour or black and white images. You cannot mix 2 black and whites, one colour and one black and white again. You can place the b&w by the gray or black images or just leave them for the end. 3. Meticulous selection Kill your darlings. We all ever had a clients with such a clear vision of what he/she needed that it does not represent your work but someone else's. I would not include that in my portfolio at least I am proud of it. I do mention the company on my client list but I don't include the images on the gallery. A great photographer looked at my portfolio a few years ago and asked "What do you want to be hired for? Take out everything that does not lead you to that sort of ideal projects!". The selection afterwards was natural, potential clients who did not like the mood in my portfolio simply did not work with me and I am glad I did not worked with them. I had time to work with those who enjoyed my work and I felt motivated to create something amazing, together with them. Better include 5 works you feel that they truly represent you than 100 sort of just alright samples. You don't have to share everything you have done since your potential clients don't have the time to look at it. Just share the ones that will lead to a "Yes we want to work together". 4. Client cases. A client once mentioned that they had chosen me because I had included some samples of work I did for other company similar to theirs. So they felt I had the experience in this and they could trust me. 5. SEO! Don't forget to add tags, titles, description and metadata to your images. All this helps you to build a history on Google which brings you every time higher and higher on the list. Sites like Wix have great SEO optimization tools. Also, instal Google analytics so you can measure your target group statistic (locations, language, age range, etc). Good luck pimping it up!